Into the Tomb
by waitingondelena
Summary: Damon loved Katherine, and for a century his only objective was seeing her again. So how does he feel when he finds she wasn't there waiting for him? And what did the Elena gave him mean? One shot, Damon's POV of the tomb scene in 1x14 Fool Me Once.


"Come on," I snapped impatiently. Stefan's little girlfriend, Elena, struggled behind me, picking her way through the dense forest.

"I'm going as fast as I can," she told me, pushing her hair out of her eyes. It was something I noticed she did a lot. Human fidgeting always annoyed me, but she somehow managed to make that particular habit intriguing.

She stumbled forward, bringing me out of my thoughts. I shook my head, disgusted with myself. Focus. Eyes on the prize. I could practically taste Katherine on my lips, her warm body folded against mine and her delicate little fangs sinking into the artery just above my—

"Um, Damon?"

I glanced sharply over at Elena. She looked eerily similar to Katherine, but she was clearly…not. This also interested me. What made them so different? People were people, right? We all ending up wanting the same thing in the end.

Sex. Power. Revenge.

"Damon," Elena said again, and this time I noticed her sleeve caught on a low hanging branch. "I'm stuck," she said sheepishly.

I growled and marched back over to her. Why was she so _slow_? I wanted to see Katherine. Now. Grabbing her jacket and ignoring her cries of protest, I ripped it from the branch.

She looked at the ripped sleeve of her jacket, then at me, her eyes snapping with indignation. "You ripped my jacket!"

I shrugged. "You're wasting my time."

"But I—aaah! What are you doing?"

Tired of listening to her whine, I had picked her up and slung her over my shoulder, careful to keep the Grimoire tucked safely between my jacket and my pants . "Maybe now we'll make it to the tomb before I turn two hundred," I remarked dryly.

"Put me down! Damon! Put me down!" She wiggled her body, trying to dislodge herself from my grip.

I smiled to myself. Not happening sweetie. "Elena if you keep moving around as…delectably as you are, we're going to have some bigger things growing then just my annoyance at you."

She immediately froze. I even heard her stop breathing, although I could hear her heart beating remarkably faster. Thank God for silence. Now I could think about Katherine. How grateful to me would she be to get out? Maybe she would reward me. I smirked, even though I felt the twist inside which meant I cared more than I realized. Katherine's hair, Katherine's smile, Katherine's…Jesus Elena's ass was tight.

Startled by the thought, I nearly dropped Elena before catching her and quickly setting her on the ground. Where had that come from? It must have been because she looked so much like Katherine.

Elena brushed off her jacket, glaring at me. "Are you done manhandling me?"

"Not nearly," I informed her. And fuck it, I meant it. I wanted to touch her again. Frustrated, I ran my fingers through my hair and turned back towards the direction of the tomb. "Can you manage to walk from here, Elena?"

"I'm not four," she snapped, and as if to prove me wrong, she strolled in front of me, hitting tree branches and bushes viciously out of her way. Despite myself, I grinned. What I wouldn't do to have all that energy and feistiness centered around me…

It took me little more than two strides to catch up to her again. "Nice try," I breathed into her ear. She shivered satisfyingly and I moved on ahead, determined to ignore her now that I had her all riled up.

"Are you sure Damon will come back with her?" I heard the old witch ask Stefan. I rolled my eyes. No, of course I wasn't coming back with her, I had killed her, eaten her heart, and completely lost my chance to save Katherine.

The lengths of idiocy people's minds went to never failed to amaze me.

I gave a short whistle, as if calling a dog, to let them know I was entering the clearing. No need for hysterical screams tonight. The three of them, the old witch, Bonnie and my brother, Stefan, turned to face me.

"Brother," I greeted them, moving swiftly into the clearing and pulling out the Grimoire. "Witches."

"Everything ok?" I heard Stefan ask immediately. Oh for the love of Christ. What was he worried about? She clearly wasn't harmed, and if I had somehow jeopardized their relationship…I smiled. He'd know. Even with his furry creature powered senses, he'd know.

Elena sighed. "I just want to get this over with. Are we ready?"

"Yes," Bonnie replied.

Good. I stared hungrily at the tomb door, Katherine's prison for the past two hundred years. I wasn't sure I could wait any longer.

I watched as Bonnie and her grandmother began setting things up for their spell, lighting torches and chanting the four elements of the earth. "Earth. Air. Fire."

"Water," Bonnie interjected, handing her a water bottle that was then sprinkled on the ground. I frowned. Tap water? That's all they used? I had expected it to be water from some obscure stream in Iceland collected by a pregnant virgin, or something as idiotically impossible as that.

"That's it?" Elena asked from behind me. "Just water from the tap?"

I turned around quickly, momentarily surprised, wondering if somehow she had read my mind. But that was impossible. Elena wasn't special. I was facing front again before she had a chance to catch me staring at her.

"As opposed to what?"

"I just figured it had to be blessed or mystical or something."

I reached into my jacket, pulling out a packet of blood and wrapping the tube around the top.

"What's that?" Stefan asked in his usual annoying, "I-am-better-than-thou" fashion.

If he didn't get that flashlight out of my eyes, I was going to set him on fire with it.

"It's for Katherine," I answered, smiling a little. "Gotta have something to get her going." Stefan gave me a look, and I smirked. "Unless your girl's offering up a vein to tap."

Both of us looked back at Elena, who seemed uncomfortable being the center of both our attentions. She kept silent, and I had a curious urge to know what she was thinking.

Stefan sighed loudly, turning my attention back to him. I leaned over. "Admit it," I stage whispered. "You can't wait to get rid of me."

Stefan smiled, bitterly. Poor Saint Stefan, who never had a bad word to say about anyone. Making him hate me was the worst thing I could have done to him. And it became more enjoyable every day.

"I can't wait to get rid of you," he agreed.

"Mhmm," I smiled and nodded, already bored with his inner angst.

"We're ready," Bonnie said suddenly. Her and her grandma moved in between the circle of torches they had made, clasped hands, and closed their eyes.

"Straight out of spell casting for dummies," I muttered, but no one heard me. All of their attention was fixed on the two witches, who had now started chanting in a tongue I had never heard before.

"What are they saying?" I asked, looking between the witches and the tomb door.

"Sounds Latin," Stefan answered.

Elena shook her head. "I don't think it's Latin."

I raised my eyebrows at her. Now what did little Miss Gilbert know that we didn't? I made a mental note to follow up on this later.

The chanting seemed to go on forever, the longest wait of my almost two hundred years of existence. It was enough to put me to sleep. But the thought of Katherine kept me alert and awake, staring at the cold stone door.

In fact, I was staring so intently at the door that I didn't even turn around until the torches seemed to explode, firing higher into the sky. A loud rumbling noise shook the clearing, and I whipped around to find the stone door sliding open.

"It worked," Bonnie breathed.

Stupid teenage insecurities. I'm glad the grandmother reassured her, or we would have had to listen to her modest, "I'm not _that_ good at spells" just to hear Stefan, Elena and her grandmother boast her already inflated ego by telling her she was for the five millionth time.

"You gonna have some fire spilled?" I asked Stefan. My top priority was Katherine, but I wasn't too hot on the idea of twenty seven other vengeful vampires being released either.

Stefan nodded and turned quickly to Elena. "I'm gonna go get the gasoline and I'll be right back."

I stared at him in horror. He was more whipped then the vampire in the book I read while bored at Caroline's. "You should try telling him to heel next time," I said. But I said it absentmindedly, thinking about the next step I would take, so I wasn't very sure if I said it out loud at all.

The dark open mouth of the tomb stared at me, and I stared it back. It was almost a contest, trying to get the other one to break first. But no way was I walking away from Katherine, and no way in hell was I letting those witches close the door on me the second I stepped inside.

"You ready?" I asked, turning to Elena, as if we had planned it this way all along.

"What?" she asked, looking around, as if she expected me to be talking to somebody next to her.

"I'm not going in there by myself so you can seal me in," I said, grabbing her but looking at the witches. I was disappointed I had to explain what was happening to Elena—I had her pegged slightly smarter than that. As roughly as I pulled her against me though, I couldn't ignore the way her form was pressed against mine after being so tuned to it from carrying her here.

"You can't take her in," the old witch warned. "I'll bring the walls down."

I stared at her. Was she really that stupid? Was I doomed to live my eternal life among these simpletons? "You'll bring the walls down if I don't, you think I trust you?"

"As much as I trust you."

"Enough," Elena interrupted. She shifted slightly in my arms. "Both of you. Look he needs leverage, he needs to know that you're not gonna shut the door when he gets inside. I get it," she said, turning to me and taking a deep breath. "I'll go."

Well thank God. I let go of her and went to get one of the torches set around the clearing. I would have dragged her in there if I needed to, but hysterically crying girls were never fun to deal with before you knocked them out to shut them up.

I smirked at the two witches, not being able to resist gloating at getting my way. Then I led Elena into the mouth of the tomb with the torch, while she followed closely behind with the flashlight Stefan had so thoughtfully left behind.

The second I entered the tomb, I could feel them. Cold, decaying and starving…and they could smell the delicious food source standing only right behind me.

"What is that?" Elena asked fearfully.

So she could hear them too…interesting. But again, something to think about another day. My only priority now was Katherine. "They can sense you," I told her, and I heard my voice, cold, emotionless, detached. It was exactly how I felt. My entire undead life had been leading towards this one moment, and the little human girl behind me meant absolutely nothing.

"Now, where is she," I muttered, quickly moving away from Elena. Hopefully she'd be smart and stay there. I didn't want her getting hurt. For entirely selfish reasons of course. I wasn't quite finished with her yet, and I was sure Katherine would find her interesting. But I couldn't let her out of the tomb if I didn't want to be trapped down here too.

"Katherine, Katherine," I muttered to myself, shining my light into each vampire's face. All of them were grotesque and shriveled, but I could still make out who they were.

"No, no, no," I muttered, seeing some familiar faces and some new ones. But none were Katherine. The torch light passed over one face and I laughed. It was Patrick, a boy from town I had always seen following Katherine around like a lovesick puppy. "I never liked you," I informed him, kicking his boot.

I stood up and looked around the room. None of these were Katherine. Maybe she had managed to crawl into a small space to spend the rest of her life? Or maybe in my excitement I had completely passed over her face. I decided to go through the room again.

About half a minute and two trips through the room later, I was becoming frantic. "Katherine! Katherine!" I called, as if she could answer me. She had to be in here, she had to be! Stefan and I saw her being taken away, in chains, to the church. There was no way she could have escaped…

Of in the distance, somewhere in the front of the tomb, I heard a scream. Elena. But what did I care if one of the vampires had somehow managed to get her, I couldn't find Katherine. Where was she?

She had to be here. If she hadn't, then what had I been doing? Since the moment I woke up dead, my entire life, every choice I made, had circled around getting her back. I plotted and schemed, I killed and fed, I did everything I could to ensure that this moment would come, that I would finally be reunited with her.

"KATHERINE," I roared. She was in here, I knew it. I could…I could sense her, if I really, really tried…"KATHERINE! KATHERINE!"

Where WAS she? I needed her, I needed her to lead again, lead me into the warmth I felt when we kissed, whenever she touched me. I had imagined none of it, it was all real, she had loved me, I was letting her down by not finding her. She was just around the corner, somewhere in this tomb, begging for me, for her love, and I couldn't find her, I couldn't help her…

I shined the light over the faces again and again, desperately hoping for anything. Her sweet face, a clue as to why she wasn't here, a centuries old note reading 'Damon, meet me in Paris'.

But there was nothing. Nothing was here, and the thought was slowly crawling through my mind, invading my entire body, and nesting in some area close to my heart.

"She's not here," I muttered. I kicked the wall, the closest thing to me. "She's not here!"

I moved towards the center of the room, as if in some kind of trance, muttering all the way, "She's not here, she's not here…"

"Damon."

I barely registered the fact that Stefan had joined me, I was already reaching into my jacket pocket for the pouch of blood I had brought, just for her.

"What?"

I flung the blood at the wall, my face contorted with rage, my entire body on fire with it. "SHE'S NOT HERE!" I yelled at him.

Stefan looked shocked, and a bit worried. "Damon, we've got to get out of here," he pleaded.

"No, no," I said frantically. "She's in here, she's in here somewhere, she's waiting for me. We can't leave until—"

"Damon," Stefan tried again, tried to get my attention. "We need to get out of here."

"This doesn't make sense, they locked her inside," I insisted.

But Stefan wouldn't listen to me. He didn't understand that Katherine needed me as much as I needed her. "If we don't leave now, we're not getting out."

He had lost me; I was already looking around the room again, searching for her face. "How could she not be in here?"

Stefan moved closer, grabbing my shoulder. "It's not worth spending all eternity down here, she's not worth it!"

"NO," I growled, ripping his hand of my shoulder, my jacket falling off in the process. I felt as if that very moment there was nothing more I'd like to do then kill my brother. How dare he, how dare he, when Katherine was somewhere, not in this tomb maybe, but trapped somewhere, and she needed my help, and I had to go to her. How DARE he suggest she wasn't worth eternity, of course she was. I loved her.

"Damon!" I heard a distressed voice call, and for a moment my entire head cleared and my world went sane again. It was Katherine, she was ok, we had found her…

But the person who appeared in the doorway wasn't Katherine. You couldn't even pretend she was. Elena Gilbert was so much herself, so, not Katherine. There was no mistaking the two.

"Please," she begged me.

And with that one word, it hit me. Katherine wasn't in here. She never had been, she had never meant to be. She wasn't waiting for some Prince Charming to ride in and carry her off, she had saved herself, and she had neglected to tell the Prince about her plans. She wasn't waiting for me to show up, she hadn't wasted 150 years thinking about me as I had about her. She had left.

I looked at Elena Gilbert, staring at me earnestly, and I couldn't help but appreciate the irony, even in my pain. Katherine, or rather Katherine's look-a-like, coming to save me instead of the other way around. Shrugging on my jacket, I followed her and Stefan up the stairs of the tomb, refusing to look back even once.

I walked past the two witches, casting some sort of spell in their witchy circle again. I walked past the torches and into the shadows, and then I leaned my head on the brick wall provided for me there.

Katherine wasn't there. My entire life…it had been for nothing but her. And she wasn't there.

I heard the witch's chanting stop, and I heard the tomb door slam. I turned around to look. Katherine hadn't been in there, she probably had never set foot in the tomb, but the slam of the door still felt as if it were slamming shut my heart. For good.

I followed Stefan and Elena through the woods, vaguely registering that they were worried over what Anna had done to Elena's brother. Why hadn't Katherine found me? Didn't she love me as much as I loved her? It would have been an easy thing to do, to find me. I was never quiet about where I was staying, never secretive.

"She never loved you," a voice whispered in the back of my mind.

"That's not true," my heart protested feebly, but as my mind persisted in repeating the words—_she never loved you, she never loved you_— my heart soon grew silent.

I took in my surroundings. I had wandered into a new clearing, following Elena and Stefan's lead. And now Elena and Stefan were checking up on Elena's brother.

I turned away from the sight. Even sibling love was making me jealous, ripping the hole in my heart wider and wider. Suddenly I heard a leave crunch and I looked up. Elena was moving towards me, steadily, not hesitating or pausing to see if it was safe for her to come near.

So trusting, I thought bitterly. I actually liked that about her, naïve though she was. But she would soon lose her trust in life too, and become as broken as I felt.

I wondered vaguely what she was doing as she moved even closer, standing right in front of me and then, before I had time to react, she threw her arms around me and pulled me into a hug.

I hadn't been hugged like Elena was hugging me since my mother died. She was rubbing my back, nuzzling her face into my neck, while I could only stand there, unresponsive, for the first time in my life not sure how to react.

"I'm sorry," she whispered into my neck, her warm breath fanning across my cool skin.

Katherine didn't love me, I doubted now that she ever had. She had left, disregarded how I felt about her. But here was a girl, a sweet, albeit annoying and sometimes infuriating girl, who I purposely brought to the brink of insanity everyday for the sake of my own amusement and revenge.

Here she was, in my arms, caring about me.

And the hole that had ripped itself out of my heart began to heal.


End file.
